Precision And Grace (2015) Perfume Review

„Dance is poetry made visible, the fragrance is a dance of molecules invisible.“ Precision and Grace!
My story about dancing dates back to early childhood.

One day, a seven-year-old, freckle-faced, green-eyed girl with thick and long braids asked her mom to take her to ballet lessons. It was something other girls talked about, elegantly raising their arms, swirling around, pretending to be ballerinas performing on stage.
So she did, my mother took me to a ballet school and signed me up for admission, done by means of a training period at the end of which pupils take an entrance examination to the ballet school. I was so proud and happy, bright-eyed, and could hardly wait for a class to start. Unfortunately, it seemed that I was the one who did everything – wrong. Splits? Precision and grace? Really…

My hips weren’t that flexible. Routine? I seemed to be always the one who couldn’t repeat it without adding something of my own. Surely enough, one day after rehearsal my ballet teacher called me aside and said: „In my opinion, you’d make a perfect handball team player. Go and play handball! Ballet is not for you.“ My mother did not take me to ballet classes anymore after that day. I did start playing handball, never enjoyed it much (it is a quite rough sport), and quit playing in the 8th grade.

I grew up thinking that I cannot dance. Of course, hopping up and down and some feet shuffling was involved in rock concerts, in a disco, or any other social event where people danced, but dancing? Like amateur dancing? No, that was just something I thought I had absolutely no talent for.

I admired every dancer, knowing it is such hard work. I loved to watch people dance, just any dancing, classical dances, hip hop, anything really. Especially ballet. To have all the strength of a beast and the fragility of a butterfly? I knew there is a dark side to professional dancing: it is mostly composed of blood, sweat, and tears. Literally. What you see is precision and grace, but what’s behind that sometimes isn’t that pretty.

The agony and ecstasy

Years passed and I continued to avoid any thought of active dancing training. Work, family, friends, life happened. Until one day, when a young woman I met invited me to come and see what training looked like in her studio. It is a pole fitness studio, and all the insecurities emerged: I am not fit, I am not flexible, I cannot dance. Never could. So many self-limiting thoughts, too many not to be dealt with. I decided to go and give it a chance. The rest is history, really. I am now almost six years in active training and dancing routine, and yes! I have experienced the famous „zone“ quite often when dancing freely!

I can dance! And how! Not in the way I thought about dancing as a little girl, not being a classical ballerina, but hey! I dance. With precision and grace!

During hard, core muscles and flexibility training, I also learned that pain is a part of the process. That accepting pain is necessary, as is listening to your body. And that the body remembers, oh, it does! Pain is a fact, but suffering because of that pain is subjective. Along with anatomical control, every dancer, in my opinion, develops an expectation of a certain amount of pain or soreness. Maybe this acceptance is best learned at an early age, I like to think that an adult person can embrace it as well.

Yet, I am a recreational dancer. I can only imagine what professional dancers go through…What I have learned is that the body has laws of its own to be respected. The satisfaction comes from the complete fusion of body and mind, letting go of all the rational thinking, having confidence in your body, and being in the dance flow. The flow is what gives you the most pleasurable moments on the dance floor, or anywhere. Flow is a relationship between the level of challenge and skills: when both skills and challenges are abundant, you can reach the flow!

Precision is a prerequisite of grace
As with perfumes, as with perfumes!

Those were my thoughts after my first encounter with Precision and Grace. I really admire Geza Schoen, and I was very curious about this perfume (for those who are unfamiliar with the names of „Noses“, Geza created Eccentric Molecules, described as anti-fragrance, breaking the rules of fragrance composition). Even more curious when I read that his creative partner was Polina Semionova, an internationally famous ballet dancer. Let me quote her:

„The precision only comes with hours of work in the studio. Then, when I go on stage, I don’t think anymore. I release myself to the music. I fly.“

„The Beautiful Mind Series celebrates women – not in the conventional way of the fragrance industry, as objects of desire – but for their intelligence and creativity. The imagery for the series, by design house Me Company, depicts the beauty of the brain in action. Instead of the faces of Stenger and Semionova, the packaging features neural pathways.

These are imaginative representations of synapses connecting during memory retrieval, and of the kinesthetic intelligence of the dancer. Here, the non-conformism is all in the concept of the anti-celebrity fragrance, and the tribute to the dazzling female brain.

The dots and triangles are a series of placements, they represent the precise steps she must take,” explains Paul White of Me Company. The color flows reflect a different way of mapping a balletic gesture. “Dance is precise, but it’s also semi-airborne. The pulses of color reflect the flux of the dance, almost like motion capture trails. They represent the dancer’s freedom, her joy.”- The Beautiful Mind Series

I find the fragrance very feminine, but not in an overly powdery, sweet, or sultry way, oh no. The opening is crisp and fresh, like when you sit in the wardrobe, preparing to dance. You can feel the adrenaline kicking in, but it makes you feel light and energized. The top note of Williams Pear is so delicious!

When you start to dance, making your first moves, still listening to the music, still rationally thinking, you feel the floral notes, jasmine mostly, mixed with a sweet and ripe plum. As you lose yourself to the music, florals of mimosa and osmanthus give in to warm and velvety tones.

Everything surrounding you disappears. You are flying, emotions are your wings. Eyes closed, your body has a life of its own, its warmth and movement generate musky, sandalwood tones that move with your body, gently enveloping it, making you feel safe and secure. With a warm dry-down of pure happiness, soul-deep joy! And it lasts and lasts…

In my opinion, Precision and Grace gives the flow you experience in dancing an olfactory description. Enjoy it. Dance. Wherever and whenever you can. Yes, you can!